Textmanuscripts - Les Enluminures

FRATER PETRUS, Sermones de tempore

i (paper) + 409 + i (parchment) + i (paper) folios on parchment (moderate quality, slightly fuzzy both sides, numerous original holes and repairs), modern foliation in pencil, top outer corner recto, complete (collation, i-vi12vii10viii-xiv12xv8[-8, following f. 173, cancelled with no loss of text] xvi12xvii12[-4, after f. 188, cancelled with no loss of text] xviii12[-1 before f. 197, cancelled with no loss of text]), quires are signed in roman numerals, middle, lower margin, quires 1-7, 13-14, and 16-17 at the end, and at the beginning in quires 8-12, quire 15 ends with a blank verso and is not signed, ruled visibly in ink, ruling varies depending on the scribe, some quires with no horizontal rules full across, others with single rules or the top two and bottom two horizontal rules full across, and all with single full-length vertical bounding lines, prickings outer and bottom margins, and sometimes in the top margin as well (justification, 129-127 x 96-95 mm.), written below the top line by as many as seven scribes in scripts ranging from an upright conservative gothic bookhand to quicker gothic scripts with some cursive elements in two columns of thirty-eight to thirty-two lines, changes of hand at ff. 83, 95, 143, 167, 174 and 186v, each sermon is numbered in the middle upper margin on the recto of the opening in red or black using both Arabic and Roman numerals, some notes for rubricator remain, majuscules in text highlighted in red, red rubrics, red paragraph marks (blue on f. 186), three- to two line red initials, in excellent condition with occasional slight soiling or stains at the fore-edge. Bound in early eighteenth-century cream-colored pigskin blindtooled in a panel design, with a central rectangular panel with a central fleuron stamp and floral stamps in each corner, and with double fillets forming an inner frame tooled with a floral vine pattern, and an outer with intricate palmettes and shell motifs, rounded spine with four raised bands and with two labels on spine, “Collationes spirituales”, and “Codex MS. Membranaceus seculi XIV”, in excellent condition, with very slight wear to edges and corners. Dimensions 177 x 130 mm.

This is the only complete manuscript of the unedited Sermones de tempore of Frater Petrus; the only other copy of these sermons, now in Uppsala, dated 1376, is incomplete. These sermons are apparently completely unknown to the scholarly community, and would be a splendid topic for a more thorough study. This is a well organized, legible manuscript, in excellent condition, which includes a table of the sermon themes, and an alphabetical index of the distinctions included in the sermons.

Provenance

1. The overall appearance of the manuscript, details of the script, and its subsequent history suggest that it was copied in southern Germany or Austria in the early part of the fourteenth century, probably c. 1300-30. Unfortunately, there are almost no clues in the manuscript itself to tell us more about its origin. This is not a manuscript copied by a student or preacher for his own use, since it was copied by as many as seven different scribes. However, there is also no indication that this manuscript was copied in the context of a disciplined commercial shop, since details of the ruling and quire signature vary depending on the scribe. It is a clearly organized text, equipped with numbered sermons, an index of sermon themes and, significantly, an alphabetical index of distinctions within the sermons. These details suggest it may have copied for a house of friars or regular Canons, and used as a reference text for preaching.

3. in German were added at the end of the manuscript in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The manuscript remained in Germany into the early eighteenth century, when it was bound.

Text

[f. 1, blank but ruled]; ff. 1-203v, One-hundred and forty-seven sermons; ff. 1-87, sermons 1-63, as listed in Schneyer, 4:57-579, with the following exceptions: sermon 7 in Schneyer is actually two sermons, listed as 7 and 8 in this manuscript; Schneyer does not include the manuscript’s sermons 18, 19 and 60, and sermon 58 in Schneyer is actually two sermons, numbers 62 and 63 in this manuscript; ff. 87-203v, eighty-four sermons, not listed in Schneyer; sermon 83 is followed immediately by 85, and sermon 124 is followed immediately by sermon 128, although the omitted sermons 126 and 127 are included in the list of themes on ff. 203v-204

This is the only complete manuscript of the Sermones de tempore of an author known only as “Frater Petrus.” These sermons were known to Schneyer in only one manuscript, Uppsala, Universitätsbibliotek, which is incomplete, and includes only the beginning of the sermon cycle (see Schneyer, vol. 4, pp. 574-579; and Andersson-Schmitt, 1988, pp. 274-277). The Uppsala manuscript is dated 1376 on f. 68v; it has tentatively been described as German, although it includes no information about its origin or later owners. In addition to the sermons by Frater Petrus, it includes numerous texts and prayers, including works by Bonaventure, Anselm of Canterbury, and sermons by the Franciscan author, Franciscus de Mayronis (c. 1280-1327).

These sermons have never been printed, edited, or, to my knowledge, studied in any fashion by modern scholars. An investigation of the text of about fifty of the sermons found only in the manuscript described here found no evidence that any of these sermons circulated independently in other collections, and Schneyer evidently did not find the fifty-eight sermons that also occur in the Uppsala manuscript in any other manuscripts. The name of the author survives only through the rubric on f. 150 of the Uppsala manuscript, “Incipiunt collationes fratris petri de aduentu domini ….” We know nothing about the author apart from this name.

A thorough study of the text of these sermons would enable us to understand more about their author and the probable context for which these sermons were written. The sermons follow the form of the scholastic or thematic sermon of the later Middle Ages; they begin with a biblical theme, which is used as the basis for the structure of the sermon. Divisions are emphasized, and indeed, are often delineated in this copy by red brackets. A brief examination of a few of the sermons suggests that sources other than the Bible seem to be infrequently quoted, and the sermons are more straightforward than many sermons written by university masters for a university audience. They also do not appear to have been directed primarily at a popular or lay audience, based on the lack of stories and exempla. It seems possible that they were written for a house of friars or regular canons, and meant to be used as model sermons that could be adapted by the preacher for different occasions.

The sermons in this manuscript are also organized so that information within each sermon was searchable. Each sermon was carefully numbered in the upper margins in red or black Roman or Arabic numerals. These numbers were used as references for the two indexes that are included at the end of the volume. The first index lists all the biblical themes in the order that they appear in the volume with the number of the corresponding sermon. The second index is an alphabetical index of the distinctions found in the sermons, identified by the number of the sermon, and a letter reference indicating where within the sermon the distinction is found. Biblical distinctions, or distinctiones, tracked the different meaning of a word or concept in different passages of the Bible. The use of the term in this index seems to include almost any passage in a sermon where a word is discussed according to a number of different meanings, for example, “Adoratio deuota sit tripliciter” (Devout adoration in three ways), but it also includes simpler topical entries, such as “Paraclitus spritus sancti”, or “Panis corporis Christi.” On ff. 1v-57v, 71-87, and 174-186, the scribe has added marginal notes of the distinction found on that folio, and written in the reference letters, both alongside the note, and in the margin of the text next to the appropriate passage in the sermon. Even without this marginal apparatus, however, the use of red brackets to highlight distinctions makes it possible to find the passage listed in the index quite easily.

This sermon cycle, based on the evidence of this new complete manuscript, was a well thought-out text, which included multiple sermons for each feast of the Temporal or Proper of time (the portion of the liturgical year which included the moveable feasts centered on Christ, and in particular his resurrection at Easter), beginning with Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, and concluding with the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost. It is an interesting historical puzzle that a work this long and carefully conceived survives in only these two copies (and indeed, in only one complete copy).